Surviving the Holidays with a Narcissist

Ding, dong! Ding, dong!
Ding, dong! Ding, dong!
It’s the most trigger-ful time of the year!
With Narcissists yelling
And Borderline dysregulation swelling, inducing fear
It’s the most trigger-ful time of the year!

It’s the crap-crappiest season of all!
With fake Facebook greetings, emotional beatings
And your family forbidden to call
It’s the crap-crappiest season of all!

There’ll be parties for pouting
Traditions for flouting
And tantrum-ing out in the snow
There’ll be confabulated stories
And tales of the glories of much better
Boyfriends/Girlfriends long, long ago

It’s the most trigger-ful time of the year!

Ah, the holidays . . .

Peace on earth, good will toward men, joy to the world and all that happy, happy stuff. That’s if you’re not in a relationship with a narcissist, borderline, histrionic, psychopath or garden variety jerk. In which case you’ve probably developed a whopping case of PTSD (Post-Traumatic Santa Disorder).

I’m not talking about having the holiday blues. Many people feel a little down this time of year. Dysfunctional family childhood memories, social isolation, consumerism, the state of the world, not being in a relationship, etc., can feel more acute in December. If this is true of you, practice good self-care, be gentle with yourself and ride it out. It’ll pass.

I’m talking about personality disordered people who often intensify their usual hell on earth, ill will toward men and suffering to the world during the holiday season, or any special occasions for that matter. Thanksgiving, Christmas, Hanukkah and New Year’s can seem like the Olympics of characterological asshattery.

So what can you do to make the holidays easier for you? Yes, you. Forget about preventing your narcissist, borderline or psychopath from getting her or his Grinch on. That’s most likely going to happen no matter what you do, so why not do what’s good for you for a change? To be clear, the more you do for a narcissist, borderline, histrionic or psychopath the more demanding, ungrateful and contemptuous they become. Feeding entitlement begets more entitlement. If you accept that, then I ask again, what can you do to make the holidays easier for you?

Schedule self-care. Make time to go to the gym. Eat healthfully. I know it can be difficult to make time for yourself especially during this time of year and especially if your Crazy is up your butt nonstop, but try. Take a walk. Shovel snow. Go grocery shopping. If it gets you out of the house and away from her or him, do it. If it involves some kind of physical labor, or any kind of work for that matter, it should be easier to make a break for it. Tell them you’re going gift shopping for them. If that means taking a quiet walk in the woods to think of the “perfect present” (wink, wink), so be it.

Don’t cause yourself unnecessary stress. Has she ever really been happy with her presents? Even when you’ve given her exactly what she’s asked for? Don’t sweat finding the perfect gift. It won’t be good enough. Or, it will be exactly what she wants, but you either a) only did it to make others think you’re a good husband because you’re really not, or b) it doesn’t count because she had to tell you what she wanted and if you really loved her you would have known without her having to tell you. When there’s no chance of succeeding why worry about failing? Let go and embrace the failure. It’s way easier.

Don’t overindulge. While it may be tempting to motorboat a gallon of heavily spiked eggnog or buzz saw your way through mountains of cookies, don’t. The crash from sugar and alcohol will only make you feel worse.

Enforce boundaries or accept the impending drama/silent treatment. One or the other. If your wife/husband or girlfriend/boyfriend runs up the credit cards you have three choices: 1) Stress over it and say nothing; 2) Stress over it and try to explain, again, why going into (more) debt for presents is bad; or 3) shut her off and ignore the screaming, crying, guilt tripping, sulking and being portrayed as The Bad Guy to any and all who will listen, including the kids.

He hates your family and throws and annual shit fit prior to the visit in an effort to spoil it? Or refuses to go at the last minute because you did [INSERT MANUFACTURED GRIEVANCE HERE]? You know, he would’ve gone — heck, he wanted to go! — but YOU had to do what you did. Tsk, tsk, tsk. To hell with your narcissist or borderline. If you want to go and don’t care about the guilt trip, tantrum or pouty pout once you return, go. Let him stew and seethe all by his lonesome. Or, you can call your family and cancel. Again.

Why do narcissists do this? Typically, male and female narcissists don’t like going anywhere or doing anything that isn’t either all about them or about something that interests them — like themselves. Spending time with your family probably means the narcissist is going into an environment in which they have to behave themselves and it won’t be all about them. It also hurts you and isolates you. Win-win.

Lower your expectations. Expect the worst. If you’re lucky, it won’t be as bad that. Yes, you’ll spend time, money and effort to find a special gift for your narcissist. And in return, you’ll get a present that makes you wonder if they put any time, money and effort into thinking about what you’d like. Newsflash: They didn’t. Does anyone actually want a pair of ratty acrylic fur slippers 2 sizes too big from Restoration Hardware? (True story).

Call a seasonal strike. If you can opt out of the typical holiday melodrama (e.g., if your Crazy or Crazies are your family of origin and not your spouse), do it. Stay home and do a Planet of the Apes marathon. Spend the day with friends instead. Volunteer at a local charity or just pretend like it’s any other day of the year.

Consider Christmas Future. Do you really want to spend another November-December like this one? Like the last 5 or 10 or more? Would you like to spend time with your family and friends without the drama and emotional torture? Would you like to have fun going to a tree lot and decorating without an adult toddler dumping on it? Or how about being able to simply enjoy a peaceful, contemplative end of the year? You can do and have all these things, but not if you remain in a toxic, dysfunctional relationship. You can’t become healthy while in a relationship that’s the equivalent of a radioactive waste zone. And on that note . . .

Happy Holidays!

Counseling, Consulting and Coaching with Dr. Tara J. Palmatier, PsyD

Dr. Tara J. Palmatier, PsyD helps individuals work through their relationship and codependency issues via telephone or Skype. She specializes in helping men and women trying to break free of an abusive relationship, cope with the stress of an abusive relationship or heal from an abusive relationship. She combines practical advice, emotional support and goal-oriented outcomes. Please visit the Schedule a Session page for professional inquiries or send an email to shrink4men@gmail.com.

Comments

Beware of narcissists bearing (Christmas)gifts, they are bound to explode in your face, or poison you. -Sam Vaknin (who is a narc/anti-sos)
So looking forward to christmas with the inlaws and with my BPD better half, there wil be enuf PD to see from space.

Yes, and sadly no. 12years down the line, and i am kinda used to it, but it is hopefully about to change.

She insisted i see a counselor (6months ago) for depression, and he recognised me as a co-dependent (or at least traits) who was getting near the end of the line. So kinda hanging in there this Christmas, and in January i am, with my counsellors help setting course for a new life.
Using this time to document, and setting some financial safeguards in place for the children and myself.

Hi, this is my first time on the site and I’ve read several posts now that were revealing to me about my own current situation. I would like advice or thoughts from others here, if you wouldn’t mind, as I’m totally lost and out of my ken with all of what is happening now.

8 months ago I met S. online on OKC. We hit it off almost immediately – she was hot, seemed totally down to meet me, we both had a sense of humor, she made me feel wanted and needed because my last relationship (I caught her sleeping with a man a week after I told her I wanted to get married to her) left me with serious co-dependency and self-confidence issues. I feel like my issues allowed me to get taken advantage of in this current relationship (that is now, hopefully, coming to a positive end).

We spent every single day together for the 8 months essentially. She was always right next to me when we were living together in the city in her apartment. No matter where I went in the small apartment, she followed me. I almost felt like I couldn’t breathe. Emotional abuse started small enough that I just assumed it was normal and innocuous – criticizing me for how I clean pans, for complaining about work too much as a teacher of children, making poor decisions dating women in the past ( I had told her about my ex).

Then the abuse started to spin wildly out of control. She took me to her home in Canada for the summer, we both live in California at present, to hang out with her family and travel with her because her dad had promised her a vacation upon her completing law school. She said I talked constantly about other women, about fantasizing about them, so much so that S. couldn’t help but think of me fantasizing about everyone we saw. This couldn’t be further from the truth. I mentioned twice when we were out in the city (something that is new for me, being from the suburbs and having lived with my parents for my whole life until now at 28 – she’s 31) when women looked like they might be prostitutes. S. took this to mean that I’m obsessed with prostitutes and she started to mock me even, saying why don’t I go out and just bang one. She broke up with me several times over just that little incident alone.

The real abuse started cascading, however, when she couldn’t stop thinking about my ex. She had gone through, without my permission, all of my emails one day and found anything and everything she could about my ex. She looked at chat logs, at emails back and forth, at facebook posts and pictures – it was insane, at least to me it was. I had mentioned early on in our relationship how awful my ex was and how I couldn’t ever be with a person like that again in my life…because I really wanted S. to know I had been hurt before and wouldn’t put up with it again and also that I thought, at the time, that S. was so much better for me in every way than my ex was.

As the summer in Canada wore on, we went to a music festival together. We were both on LSD watching the Killers (amazing) and afterwards snuggled in a hammock out in an empty field at around 2am. I mentioned to her that I thought about other girls sexually sometimes and if she ever thought about other guys – I asked her this because we had been very open early on about the possibility of having a threesome together..and there were tons of hot girls at this concert. I understand that that question could open a can of worms now…but we were both happy and on LSD at the time and I honestly didn’t even think twice about it until the next day when she broke up with me yet again and tried to take my Macbook from me and kick me out of the room. I tried to get my macbook back from her when she kicked me in the chest HARD – so hard I lost my breath for a moment.

The rest of the summer was full of little spats here and there: I hadn’t put up blinds in the room to block the sunlight (she had a brain injury from a car accident and says she’s highly sensitive to light stimuli), I hadn’t cleaned up the kitchen enough, I hadn’t bought her the right bicycle for her to ride (despite me pestering her for weeks about helping me find her a bike since she said she wanted to ride with me).

Fast forward to now. We got married on the 15th this month to get her citizenship in the USA because her student visa expired when she was suspended for an entire year for an honor code violation from law school and, thus, can’t legally reside here until she is re-enrolled in school. I wanted to help her out and keep her here in the country as if she left, she would be barred from reentry for 3 years because she was here in the USA for so long on an visa that was just revoked. I thought I was doing the right hting and helping us stay together by getting married, but I always felt like my back was against the wall with the decision and it’s not something I wanted to do at all.

Now, everything has completely fallen apart. She recently had an abortion after finding out she was 6 weeks pregnant. Neither of us have a job, she can’t legally work in America, and neither of us had a stable life for a child…YET SHE STILL WANTED TO KEEP THE BABY until I plead with her to have the abortion. She was on pain meds and hormons for several days and was physically in a lot of pain and was miserable, which I think contributed to what happened last Thursday (Thanksgiving) and Friday night when she went physically violent.

We missed Thanksgiving with my family entirely because S. wasn’t feeling well after the abortion and had decided to breakup with me again after I told her I was tired of her yelling at me about something at 4am…which was insane by itsself…the night before (Wednesday). So we missed thanksgiving and didn’t get along at all that day. Things escalated last Friday night, I was caught looking up girls on Facebook who play video-games and who are attractive to me. These aren’t girls I have a relationship with or even know, they’re just popular girls on this elite girls gaming fb group. S. saw this and freaked out and immediately dumped me right then and there. After she dumped me, she demanded to see the rest of my search history (which was just that and porn and job applications I was making) and I asked her not to do that because it was my privacy and I respect her privacy more than she respects mine, meaning I don’t go around snooping in her life and tracking her social media or looking at her emails.

When I tried to move out of the apartment with my computer because she had just dumped me for the 10th (at least) time, she went physical and started beating me. She punched me with closed fists in my back right at my spine under my neck. Then she sunk her nails into my right tricep until I started bleeding. I tried to move out with my computer and told her it was my property and that this was assault. She started mocking me for being in pain, grabbed my balls and said “You feel this? You have nothing there – You’re not a man”. She tried to pull my sweats down and put her hand up my ass and then she got my skateboard and hit me hard 3 times in the lower back with it.

I tried to restrain her by holding her arms down and putting her on the couch so she couldn’t hit me anymore – I did not hit her back, nor did I try and cause her pain, I tried to just restrain her by pulling her wrists down, admittedly I pulled down hard, but I did not strike her at all. That’s when she tried to push her foot through my throat while I was holding her wrists. I managed to break away and I was almost out the door with my computer when she jumped me and pushed my head down and tried to yank a full hand-grab’s worth of hair out of my head. I have long hair so this was very painful. I again tried to restrain her and I tried to pick her up and put her in her room so I could just leave in peace and show her I wanted physical separation.

I told her I wanted a divorce/anullment yesterday – she wants to stay married until February so she can stay legally in the US in the apartment in the city her father pays for entirely so she can try and get enrolled as a guest student in a law school around here. She says if she tells her parents we got divorced after just 2 weeks of marriage, that they will be furious with her and pull the plug on her financially – which would ruin her as she hasn’t worked really her entire life, she doesn’t have a law school degree still and she doesn’t have a husband now.

It’s taken me a while to admit this all, but I feel like this is an example of abuse. I tell myself that I am just as much to blame as she is for what has happened, but I never physically attacked her just to get my way with her before and I’ve never just broken up with her over and over again. I don’t get into shouting matches with her to put her down or to win anything, I try and avoid conflict – which she mocks with a low, hushed voice mimicing me trying to calm her down when she’s really upset.

Without knowing everything about us and our relationship, do you think it was an abusive one? Happy holidays.

Reread what you wrote as if a stranger wrote it and then ask yourself the same questions. If and when you get out of this relationship I strongly urge you to consider seeking counseling for yourself before re-entering the dating pool. You yourself state the abuse began early on and then ask if others think you’re in an abusive relationship. Whatever you do, don’t get her pregnant.